Improving Your Home

Most people who have a crawlspace tend to forget they have it or ignore it completely. However, if you are desperate for more storage space in your home, a crawlspace can really be useful. If your current crawlspace is too wet to use for storage, or the floor in the crawlspace is still a dirt floor, there is help.

Leveling and Supplying a Floor

If there is still a dirt floor in the crawlspace, this happens because previous owners built an enclosed porch over a previously open porch and did not lay a foundation. The crawlspace exists because the only way to reconcile the newly-enclosed porch with the open space underneath is to create a crawlspace. A crawlspace restoration expert can level the dirt floor under the crawlspace, and then create a concrete floor. This stops ground water from seeping up and stops the water from creating a very wet, muddy, and unusable crawlspace.

Crawlspace Waterproofing

If you already have a concrete floor in the crawlspace as a result of slab foundation construction, then you need to waterproof it. There are a couple of approaches used to waterproof a crawlspace. They include using banked floors to send water into drainage holes, using pumps to pull the water out and pump it away from the crawlspace, and using plastic sheeting and insulation to prevent water infiltration. Companies that provide crawlspace waterproofing services, like John's Waterproofing, will crawl into the space to determine which approach would work best for your crawlspace.

Enlarging the Space

If you need a little more storage than what the current crawlspace offers, the contractor can enlarge the crawlspace to extend to the edges of your home's foundation and even deepen the crawlspace by a few inches to a foot. (It is not recommended to deepen a crawlspace more than that, as you could become trapped in the space while trying to retrieve something you have stored in it.) This expansion of depth and/or width of your crawlspace can only be done if you have just a dirt floor in your crawlspace and not a slab foundation.

Once the correct approach and techniques for waterproofing have been completed, your crawlspace should be waterproof for the next couple of decades. You are free to store anything in that space (although it is highly recommended that you store things in plastic containers or waterproof bags just in case). If you notice any further issues with water collecting in the crawlspace, the contractor can return to discover exactly what is causing it, and repair the problem.

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About Me

When we started looking into little home projects we could do, we realized that there were some serious issues with our place. We knew that the projects were out of the scope of what we felt comfortable doing, so we began looking for different contractors who could help. We were able to find an incredible business that offered the exact kind of repair and restoration services we were looking for, and they were able to come out the same day to help us out. After they took hold of the project, things really started to move along. Check out this blog for great information on repairing or restoring your home.